Six School Types

Blossing, Ulf; Nyen, Torgeir; Söderström, Åsa; Tønder, Anna Hagen

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-12724-8_4

Cited by 4 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…Participants in the group interviews were selected to cover wide ranges of work experience (years of employment), teaching subjects, grade levels and leadership assignments in their organizations, with participants from all teacher teams in the school or preschool unit. Detailed questions were asked ( inter alia ) based on the model for assessing improvement capacity of an organization constructed by Blossing et al (2015). The interviews lasted for approximately 90 minutes on average.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the second step of the analysis the NVivo.11 program was subsequently used to organize the reports for further analysis. In this step of the analysis the researcher used the OD theory-based framework of improvement capacity and the four-aspect structural model developed by Blossing et al (2015) to evaluate the schools’ and preschool units’ improvement capacities. Regarding the first aspect, the infrastructure of the local school organization, the analysis was limited to the grouping subsystem constituting the organizational structure and the work in the groups.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taking a socio-structural perspective of change, Blossing et al (2015) have developed a framework, with its root in OD theories (Burke, 2008; Schmuck & Runkel, 1994; Schmuck, 1995), to capture improvement capacity in school organizations. The framework includes four aspects connected to: (1) infrastructure, (2) improvement processes, (3) improvement roles, and (4) improvement history.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Illustrative examples of teachers’ personal and relational needs could be when teachers’ individual needs to attend training courses are prioritized, although they are not in the interest of the school as a whole, or when individual teachers’ wish to work with certain colleagues is given priority although knowledge and competence needs to be spread throughout the organization. Thus, it is essential for school leaders to pay attention to this potentially distorted orientation, to avoid falling into the trap of prioritizing teachers’ individual needs so strongly that organizational needs are neglected (Adolfsson & Alvunger, 2017; Blossing et al, 2015; Stoll, 2009).…”

Section: Introduction and Aimmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Organizational building versus teachers’ personal and relational needs for school improvement

Liljenberg

Blossing

2020

Improving Schools

Self Cite

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Organizational building is essential if school leaders are to promote school improvement, but it can be difficult to combine with school leaders’ requirements to satisfy teachers’ personal and relational needs. The the aim of this study is to explore critical aspects when combining organizational building with requirements to satisfy teachers’ personal and relational needs in efforts to strengthen improvement capacity. The paper draws on a 3-year collaborative research project between a research team at a Swedish university and a municipality. It is based on data acquired in 137 interviews with 535 respondents in 28 public school and preschool units. The results highlight the importance of combining organizational building with efforts to improve teachers’ understanding of, motivation to promote, and adaptation to, the goals of the school organization. The significance of the study lies in clearly distinguishing the need to link organizational building and requirements to meet teachers’ personal and relational needs. Continually telling the story of the school and thus enabling teachers to personally connect to the improvement history is suggested as an innovative school leader strategy.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction and Aimmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Organizational building versus teachers’ personal and relational needs for school improvement

Liljenberg

Blossing

2020

Improving Schools

Self Cite

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“…The Pinewood project was funded through the national initiative ‘Knowledge Promotion – From Words into Deeds’, which was a supplemental strategy to the educational reform launched in 2006. By participating in the programme, LEAs were expected to enhance their ability to carry out school development projects designed to improve learning outcomes and learning conditions for students (Blossing et al, 2010). The Pinewood local municipality project received CEA funding, and LEAs funded within this initiative were required to collaborate with external partners (consultants or higher education institutions), to plan their work based on a mandatory organisational analysis tool provided by the CEA and to report on results during and at the end of the project.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovative work in school development

Vennebo¹

2016

Educational Management Administration & Leadership

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Leadership is recognised in both policy and research as a key enabler of innovation in schools. Numerous researchers have focused on how school leaders formally narrate their experiences of leading innovations including their observations of effect; however, modest attention has been paid to the processes through which leaders engage in innovative work. This study focuses on the work of project teams running Norwegian school projects that aim to advance teaching and enhance student learning using information and communication technologies. By employing cultural-historical activity theory, leadership is examined as enactment that is consequential to the directions of the work. The findings demonstrate that the locus of agentive actions change from moment to moment within sequences of interactions. Thus, leadership in this kind of work is not under the control of any of the actors involved or any specific individual: the centre does not hold. The study contributes to understanding leadership in innovative work by demonstrating how leadership is an outcome in emergent multi-voiced work processes. Moreover, the study indicates that the ‘making of newness’ involves innovative work at collective and individual levels, and suggests that projects conducted between loosely coupled partners would profit from adopting routines for the management of interactions.

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The idea and reality of an innovative school: From inventive design to established practice in a new school building

Sigurðardóttir

Hjartarson

2015

Improving Schools

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The physical environment in schools has in the literature of late been gaining recognition as a potential factor supporting educational change. This article draws a single case out of a research sample of 20 schools in Iceland to relate an inventive design process as the school was being developed and study the current state of established school practice. The main aim is to reveal educational ideas behind a relatively progressive school design and determine how they have turned out in everyday school life. Data include observations, surveys among staff members and interviews with both school leaders and teachers. The school was designed as an open plan building intended to enhance individualised learning and team teaching with strong ties to the wider community. A decade later, the original policy is still relatively firmly in place, in particular at the primary level, while teachers at the lower secondary level have been bending somewhat the initial design plan, leaning towards traditional teaching methods and more confined classroom layouts.

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Six School Types

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Organizational building versus teachers’ personal and relational needs for school improvement

Organizational building versus teachers’ personal and relational needs for school improvement

Innovative work in school development

The idea and reality of an innovative school: From inventive design to established practice in a new school building

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